AUGUST JAEGER: PORTRAIT OF NIMROD Frontispiece Visiting the sick. Lady Olga Wood and Professor Sanford take their leave of Jaeger and the children outside 37 Curzon Road, Muswell Hill, c. 1905. August Jaeger: Portrait of Nimrod

A Life in Letters and Other Writings

KEVIN ALLEN First published 2000 by Ashgate Publishing

Reissued 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

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Copyright © Kevin Allen, 2000

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ISBN 13: 978-1-138-73208-7 (hbk) ISBN 13: 978-1-315-18862-1 (ebk) Contents

list of Plates vii

Foreword by Percy M. Young ix

Acknowledgements xiii

A Note on the Elgar—Jaeger Correspondence xvi

Part One 1860-1904: 'And your young men shall see visions'

1. 1860-95: Dusseldorf to London 3

2. 1896-97: Composers Old and New 25

3. 1898: The Russian Campaign 36

4. 1899: A Quaint Idee 56

5. 1900: Mystic, Sublime, Superb 72

6. 1901: 'I must wax enthusiastic over something ... ' 98

7. 1902: Kensington to Muswell Hill 118

8. 1903: 'Let someone other than Jaeger give answer!' 136

9. 1904: Remission and Relapse 162

Part Two 1905-09: Prisoner of Hope

10. 1905: 'This Godforsaken, lonely Hole' 191

11. 1906: 'Please not lose heart' 207

V vi Contents

12. 1907: Dum Spiro Spero 221

13. 1908: The Road to HeU 233

14. 1909: 'I can no more ... ' 264

15. In Memory of a Seer 278

Notes 290

Index 308 List of Plates

Frontispiece Visiting the sick. Lady Olga Wood and Professor Sanford take their leave of Jaeger and the children outside 37 Curzon Road, Muswell Hill, c. 1905.

Between pages 110 and 111

1 Jaeger as a young man. Like Elgar, he liked to dress well.

2 Early days in London: Jaeger with his mother and sisters

3 16 Margravine Gardens, West Kensington

4 Isabella Jaeger: a portrait photograph by Edgar Thomas Holding, 1902

5 Another portrait, with the Guadanigni violin

6 The first page of Elgar's Variations for Orchestra, Op. 36. The word 'Enigma' has been added in Jaeger's hand.

7 'My dear Sir Hubert... ': Parry in middle life

8 Walford Davies 9 Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

10 Horatio Parker 11 Sydney Loeb

12 Jaeger replaces his jacket a bout of single-stick at Hasfield Court, September 1901 13 37 Curzon Road, Muswell Hill 14 Jaeger, Isabella and the 'bairns' at Ivy Cottage, Honley

vu viii List of Plaies

Between pages 206 and 207

15 Jaeger and Alfred Rodewald at Bettwys y Coed, 1903

16 Elgar driving 'the Shover' at Bettwys. A postcard from Rodewald: 'Nimrod had better look to his laurels ... \

17 Jaeger and Alice Elgar at Cologne, 1904

18 Jaeger with an unidentified companion, Cologne, 1904

19 Jaeger, by Edgar Thomas Holding. Jaeger inscribed a copy for Dora Penny, 'EE's No IX "Nimrod" to his sempre "Scherzando" neighbour 'DORABELLA' with sincere regard & great admiration, (for EE's MUSIC) LONDON 29.XI.02'.

20 Sydney Loeb's 'schnappssot' of Cosima Wagner at Bayreuth, 1904

21 Muswell Hill Broadway, c. 1905

22 Isabella Hunter in later life

23 'This Godforsaken, lonely Hole ... ': Jaeger at Davos

24 The Davos Valley

25 The Hotel Buol

26 Davos propaganda, from The Courier^ 20 December 1907

27 'I have been on the road to Hell... ': Jaeger's letter of 29 August 1908 to Parry

28 Jaeger's last letter to Walford Davies, written three weeks before he died. 'I can make no promise in my present state of collapse. I may be dead in August ... . ' 29 Poster for the Jaeger Memorial Concert Foreword

The most significant event in English musical history during the days of the nineteenth century was the arrival in London in 1878 of the Jaeger family from Dusseldorf. They came as refugees from Bismarckian misrule of Germany. The second son of the family, the eighteen-year-old August, was keenly musical. Other­ wise knowledgeable and with good English, apparently without difficulty he found work with the firm of George Washington Bacon & Co., Map and Chart Sellers and Publishers. Apart from work he devoted himself to learning about English music through earnest membership of two choirs: the Novello Oratorio Choir conducted by Sir Alexander Mackenzie; and an amateur choir, with many German members, partial to Brahms, conducted by the Austro-Hungarian Hans Richter. In 1890 Jaeger successfully applied for the senior post in the Publishing Department of Novello, which was responsible for much of the music then being used by choral societies. In consequence of his appointment, a new future for English music was deter­ mined. Jaeger not only supervised the publication of music accepted by the firm (normally requiring the composer to undertake the cost of publication!) but submitted it also to critical examination. A problem for Jaeger was that there were virtually no professional composers; a livelihood otherwise depending either on the post of organist in a cathedral or, more infrequently, on the post of Professor of Music at Oxford or Cambridge. Of that order, the most senior representatives were Stanford at Cambridge, and Parry at Oxford — the latter, however, being independently wealthy. Walford Davies, at the time, was Organist of the Temple Church in London and Professor in a new post in the University of Wales. in 1890 was, on the other hand, solely a composer. His eventual brief tenure in the first Chair of Music in the new University of Birmingham in 1906, however, remains to this day eponymously honoured in the tide of the senior Chair of Music. Such serious examination of new music as there was, was taken from public performance. Jaeger, however, established his credentials as critic by writing copi­ ously on new music in the Musical Times (published by Novello). During his time the editors at Novello were E.F. Jacques (until 1897) and F.G. Edwards. The first mention of Edward Elgar in the Musical Times, in 1893, commented on the poor audience in Worcester Cathedral, during the Three Choirs Festival, for the first

IX x Foreword performance of his choral work, The Light of Ufe. Mr Elgar, observed the critic, was still a young man, his sympathies with orchestra rather than voices, and in need of counselling. But 'he is no wayside musician whom we can afford to pass and forget'. Still in the Musical Times, three years later, in an account of the Cheltenham Festival, progress in reputation for the provincial composer was slow in coming: 'A musician from Malvern, Edward Elgar, appeared at this Festival as conductor of an orchestral work of his own, a ? Gradually Elgar moved forward with a number of choral works and part-songs accepted and published by Novello. In 1896 there was King Olaf'and , a year later, the Imperial March and The Banner of St George. In the provinces Elgar was now establishing a place of his own. At this point, at which serious exchange of correspondence began, a graded course for the composer was enshrined under Jaeger's protection and encourage­ ment. Then the mutual passage of letters began — those of Elgar often marked with characteristic and evocative drawings. When it was advertised in The Sunday Times of 5 March 1899, that Mr Elgar intended to follow sad patriotism into a symphony to be dedicated to the late and heroic General Gordon, for performance at the next Worcester Festival, Jaegar called a halt. Elgar was not yet ready, he determined, to compose a symphony. What he did compose in the last year of the century was the , with its own now immortalized tribute to Jaeger as Nimrod. Elgar's letters to Jaeger vividly show the extent to which he took Jaeger's advice on details of scoring. This remains the case in respect of virtually every major work composed during Jaeger's tragically short lifetime. On 2 June 1899 a characteristic exchange of thoughts found Jaeger suggesting that Elgar should go to a musical festival in Bonn, which Elgar considered an attractive possibility. Otherwise he had this to say to Jaeger: 'I want you to get a further opinion about your nasal business: I have asked a doctor friend in town who recommends Greville Macdonald. I will remind you of this when I am up again next week & we'll talk it over.' Ominously for Jaeger, this was the beginning of an end. Whatever else Jaeger achieved passes into insignificance beside his involvement with The Dream ofGerontius. As is well known, the time allowed for the production of such a major — and controversial — work for an important Festival set a virtually impossible task for the composer to complete, for the publisher to provide the parts, and for the performers to achieve a successful first performance. In their prepara­ tions, Elgar and Jaeger - probably for the only time in their relationship - found themselves in disagreement. Elgar knew Newman's mind and thought; Jaeger was less than indifferent about the text. The first performance of Gerontius was only just short of a disaster; but the friends of Elgar and the members of the Oratory to which Cardinal Newman had belonged recognized that this was an extraordinary work with a special spiritual intent. Jaeger was exasperated with the English, to the extent of playing on the most absurd practices (in his view) in English life. Writing to Dora Penny ('Dorabella' of the Variations) he exploded: Foreword xi

If it were a new oratorio by Mascagni or Perosi, the papers would have rave columns of gossip and gush - Though it is only an English musician (not an actor, or a jockey, or a Batsman) & he is treated like a very ordinary nobody. In these circumstances Elgar was obliged to point out that he — being treated like a very ordinary nobody - was dissatisfied with Novello's reluctance to pay either promptly or regularly. Once he was angered to the point of desertion in favour of a contract with Boosey and Hawkes. Novello was obliged to heed the signal. Even so, Elgar only ever appeared prosperous. Jaeger, for the greater part of his commitment to Novello, was a sick man: as his health inexorably deteriorated, he was increasingly forced to spend more time away from work. But even at this time he still pursued the interests of those musicians and friends closest to him. What Jaeger says here is partly true as the relationships within his limited orbit appear. His life was entirely within music. His — often immensely long - letters to his friends thereby expand into a remarkable confession of faith. If his composers forsook their calling, he summoned them back into his confessional. As regards Elgar, Jaeger opined that he spent too much time with the rich. Jaeger lived through the days which brought and into being. He extolled the beauty of some sixty of Elgar's part-songs (which now remain grievously and undeservedly neglected and unperformed). Jaeger's tuberculosis cruelly advanced, despite being treated — sometimes apparently experimentally — by doctors in expensive 'hotels' (private hospitals) in Switzerland. Jaeger spent much time there during the last winters of his life. His friends did all they could for him in encouragement and generosity. Those who were close to him at the end of his life - he died on 18 May 1909 — were Parry, Dorabella, Walford Davies, and Elgar. For his burial at the Golders Green Crematorium music was provided by the choristers of the Temple Church, directed by Walford Davies. A general thanksgiving for his Ufe in music took place in Queen's Hall on 24 January 1910. Kevin Allen's approach to an unfamilar period of history is broadly displayed as a colourful background to a remarkable treatment of difficult years in English musical history. This was a time without radio, recording, or brash advertisement. If, as could easily have happened, Gerontius had collapsed, so would its composer.

Percy M. Young

Acknowledgements

What August Jaeger attempted and achieved in the Elgar cause was considerable, if very well known. Less familiar, but equally remarkable, are his equally committed efforts on behalf of a variety of other composers and his work as a music critic, which Jaeger regarded as his main vocation. In this book I have concentrated on presenting fresh documentary material relating to these aspects, without attempting an exhaus­ tive study of the Elgar-Jaeger relationship. My first thanks are due therefore to those who so kindly afforded access to the largely unpublished Jaeger letters which form the basis of this book: Laura Ponsonby and Kate and Ian Russell for the letters to Sir Hubert Parry, Richard Westwood- Brookes for the letters to Sydney Loeb, and the Library of the for those to Walford Davies. These letters form part of the Walford Davies archive at the Royal College of Music and are reprinted herein by kind permission of the trus­ tees of the late Sir Henry Walford Davies. I would also like to thank Kendall L. Crilly, Music Librarian at Yale University Music Library, for providing copies of Jaeger's letters to Horatio Parker, and for kind permission to include transcriptions of them in this book; the Brotherton Collection at Leeds for permission to include the letter from Jaeger to Herbert Thompson in its possession, and the Taylor Institute Library, Oxford, for providing a copy of Jaeger's letter to Emily Harding. Sylvia Loeb has most kindly loaned her father's diaries and photographs and has been most generous with a rich store of reminiscences. I wish also to record my most grateful thanks to Arthur Reynolds for the loan of photographic and documentary items from his collection, especially a unique volume of mounted press cuttings concerning the Jaeger Memorial Concert. It has been a special pleasure to make contact with Jaeger's grandchildren, Neville Fraser, Gillian Scully, Susan Smith, Jacky Smith, Richard Hunter and Patricia Pamment, and I have benefited greatly from their enthusiasm, interest and support. All have provided family information and anecdote, and I am particularly grateful to Neville Fraser for many detailed letters and for the kind provi­ sion of various press cuttings and unpublished photographs. Of the various institutions with whom I have been in touch during the course of research I would particularly like to thank the Stadtarchiv Dusseldorf, the Russell- Cotes Gallery, Bournemouth, the Bournemouth Orchestras, the Dorset County Library, the Devon County Library, the Local Studies Department of Croydon Public Library, the Royal Society of Musicians of Great Britain, the Public Record

Xlll xiv Acknowledgements

Office, the British Library Music Library, the Library of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, The Goethe Institute, the German Historical Institute, and the staffs of the Music Reading Room at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, the Great Malvern Public Library and the Worcester Record Office at St Helen's, Fish Street. Marguerite Siegrist of the Dokumentationsbibliothek, Davos, has been most helpful in dealing with my various requests over such a long distance, and I am anxious to record my sincere thanks to Celia Clarke, Oliver Davies and Peter Horton of the Royal College of Music Library, and Elizabeth Wells, Curator of the Museum of Instruments, who have given much of their time in providing material and information. I am grateful to Harry Frost, Curator of the Dyson Perrins Museum at Worcester, for his help with James Hadley, and to Melanie Weatherley, Cathy Sloan and Chris Bennett of the at Broadheath, for their continued patience and helpfulness over my many calls on their time and expertise. For permission to reproduce various photographs from the Birthplace archive I am grateful to the Elgar Birthplace Trust. I am particularly grateful to Chris Bennett for drawing Jaeger's annotated proof copy of Elgar's First Symphony to my attention. For financial assistance towards the costs of research I most gratefully acknowl­ edge two separate grant awards from the Oppenheim-John Downes Memorial Trust. I record my grateful thanks to Farrar, Straus & Giroux for permission to use the quotation from An Arundel Tomb by Philip Larkin, published by Faber & Faber, and wish also to acknowledge the courtesy of Nicholas Williams, Editor of the Musical Times. Oxford University Press have kindly given permission for the use of extracts from letters published in Elgar and his Publishers, letters of a Creative Ufe and Edward Elgar. Utters ofaUfetime, both edited by Dr J.N. Moore. For permission to quote from Mrs Richard Powell's book, Edward Elgar: Memories of a Variation (4th edn, 1994) I am grateful to Ashgate Publishing. For permission to reproduce extracts from the letters and diaries of Edward and Alice Elgar, I am indebted to the Elgar Will Trust. I am indebted to Professor Sir John Crofton for his opinion on the causes and extent of Jaeger's tuberculosis. Extensive help and advice over medical matters has also been provided by Dr John Harcup and Dr E.F. Laidlaw, and I am most grateful for the trouble they have taken on my behalf; ultimate responsibility for the judge­ ments I have arrived at must nevertheless be mine alone. It is a pleasure to list the names of many other individuals who have contributed towards this book, including Felix Aprahamian, Wulstan Atkins, Pat and Alan Bennett, whose cataloguing of the Elgar letters at St Helen's and Broadheath is a boon to all researchers, Keith Baldock, Charles Beare, Jacob O'Callaghan, Faith Crook, Christopher Fifield, Bernard Hill, Ron Taylor and Geoffrey Hodgkins — past and present Editors of the Journal - Michael Hurd, John and Ann Kelly, Joyce Kemp, Dr Christopher Kent, Catherine Moody, Dr J.N. Moore, Peter and Katrina Norbury, Professor Ian Parrott, Michael Pope, Claud Powell, Ken Russell, Henry Sandon, Geoffrey Scargill, Geoffrey Self, Professor Jack Sislian, Michael Trott, Professor Brian Trowell, Mr C.M.W. Wilson and Dr Percy Young. Acknowledgements xv

Finally I would like to make special mention of Raymond Monk, who has most kindly and generously helped the author in ways innumerable.

I have generally edited Jaeger's letters with as light a touch as possible, preserving his eccentricities of orthography, capitalization and highly expressive punctuation; I have however altered his paragraphing when this seemed appropriate. Frequent underlin- ings were a feature of Jaeger's style; single underlining is shown in italics, double underlining in capitals, and treble underlining as bold capitals. A Note on the Elgar—Jaeger Correspondence

The fullest existing published collection of letters between August Jaeger and Elgar is to be found in Elgar and His Publishers (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1987), edited by Jerrold Northrop Moore, who states in the Preface that 'this central correspondence is here presented virtually complete for the first time\ It may, however, be important to remind ourselves of the letters which did not survive to achieve publication. Jaeger, as we might expect, was fully aware of the importance of many of the letters that Elgar had written to him, and took care to keep them, even proudly offering to show them to friends such as Sydney Loeb and Walford Davies, charac­ teristically describing them as 'deeply interesting real human documents laying bare an artist's soul'. The subsequent history of these letters is not entirely clear but it is possible to outline one or two developments. After his death, Jaeger's widow Isabella Hunter presumably retained possession of the Elgar letters, although losing many possessions in a serious house fire towards the end of the First World War. Some ten years later, in September 1927, she appears to have given documentary material to the singer Derek Oldham (1892-1968) through a mutual friend, Marguerite Swale. In a letter to Mrs Hunter dated 21 September 1927, Oldham wrote, 'Miss Swale has passed on to me the many precious letters and the Elgar manuscript which you have so generously given to me. I am so very proud to have them in my possession and I promise you they shall be greatly treasured. I thank you most sincerely for giving them to me.'1 There is no evidence of which letters were involved, or what subse­ quently happened to them. If the 'Elgar manuscript' referred to was the transcription of the Angel's Song from which the composer made at Isabella Hunter's request in March 1900, the fact that this is now part of the Elgar Birthplace archive may perhaps indicate that the accompanying letters given to Oldham are also safely part of that archive. Isabella Hunter evidently had Elgar letters in her possession four years later, in November 1931, when she loaned them to Basil Maine to help with research for his biography of Elgar.2 When he became aware of this, the composer was careful to ask for an opportunity to see the letters, and seemed to want to point Maine in other directions. TBefore you begin to select anything for use from the letters,' he wrote, 'I shall be glad to see them ... I always avoid writing letters when possible and I imagine

xvi A Note on the Elgar-]aeger Correspondence xvii anything existing might give some very misleading notions. I think I have some from other writers which might be interesting.'3 So, whatever other depredations the corre­ spondence might have suffered by this time, Elgar had the chance to censor it if he so wished. In addition, he may have chosen to discard letters during Jaeger's lifetime, and accidents happen. For the rest, the Elgar-Jaeger material held at the Elgar Birth­ place and the Worcester Record Office represents letters donated by Mrs Hunter in response to the later appeal for letters which Carice Elgar-Blake made to all her father's friends and correspondents. For whatever reasons, it is clear that the bulk of Jaeger's correspondence with Elgar has not in fact been preserved. From the internal evidence of Elgar's letters as published in E/gar and His Publishers I estimate the number of such missing items to amount to at least 240, while the published Jaeger letters number some 167. The overall correspondence should therefore be seen against this background, and certain gaps in it are always going to be suggestive. On a year-by-year basis I estimate the number of missing items as follows; 1897, 3; 1898, 22; 1899, 24; 1900,18; 1901, 17; 1902,11; 1903,11; 1904, 9; 1905,10; 1906,13; 1907, 6; 1908, 5; 1909,1.

Notes

1. Letter in possession of Neville Fraser. 2. Elgar, His Life and Works, New Portway Edition, 1973, p. xi. 3. Basil Maine, Twang with our Music, Epworth Press, 1957, p. 100. For Laura, Kate, Ian, Harriet and Joanna at Shulbrede Priory

Shulbrede Priory Part One

1860-1904: 'And your young men shall see visions'

'You see I am conceited enough to think that I too can appreciate a good thing & see genius in musicians that are not yet dead, or even not yet well known, or Cathedral Organists or directors of Schools of music in Colleges for Boys!'

1 1860-95: Dusseldorf to London

August Jaeger is widely familiar - if not taken for granted - as the devoted supporter of Elgar and the subject of one of his most inspired movements, the Nimrod Variation from the work known as the Enigma Variations. It is a piece of music that has taken on a life of its own, entering the national consciousness as an elegy, an adjunct to ceremonial, and latterly as an accompaniment to films, television commercials and even party political broadcasts. The music has found its place — or places — but the life of the remarkable man who inspired it has remained largely unknown, and what is known is in danger of turning into mythology. He is always closely associated with Elgar, but this relationship, more problematic than is usually realized, serves to obscure his efforts and achievements on behalf of many other composers, some of whom are unfairly neglected to this day. The fuller story of Jaegers impact on the English Musical Renaissance remains to be told. That impact was the product of a man gifted with a powerful critical intelligence and sensibility, totally devoted to the art he loved. His responses were highly emotional and often directly physical. like a Romantic poet, he yearned to be possessed by Beauty. He sought music that would satisfy his need to be moved to tears, that would tingle the spine and bring him out in beads of sweat. But music was not just a matter of pleasurable sensation; it was an expression of wider moral and ethical values. Beauty was indeed Truth for him. The search for those values domi­ nated his life, causing him to leave the harsh realities of his native Germany for the 'land without music', where he found his rôle. Jaeger's ethical-artistic outlook may be an unusual combination of German romanticism and Victorian values, but his inbuilt optimism was a corollary of both and provided the basis for all that he achieved. It was not the least of Jaeger's qualities that he was able for so long to combine his role of visionary and seer with the daily drudgery of office routine, business corre­ spondence and proof-reading. His position within a music-publishing firm, after all, was what gave him the power and influence he exercised to such effect, although art sometimes sat unhappily along with business, and English reserve continued to mistrust continental enthusiasm. An obsessive temperament led to continual over­ work, and there were further disappointments when committed efforts were not always appreciated even by those for whose sake he strove his hardest. Perhaps illness

3 4 August Jaeger Portrait ofNimrod was inevitable in one so single-minded and highly strung, and it may be sadly fitting that he died early, ravaged by a disease that was once associated with those with crea­ tive talent of a high order. It was a personal and family tragedy, as well as a great loss to the musical life of his adopted country. But we can be grateful that, like Marie Duplessis, August Jaeger perhaps knew that while he may not live as long as others, he promised himself to live more quickly.

Between August Johannes Jaeger's birth in 1860 and the beginning of his preserved correspondence in the 1890s there exists a huge documentary gap. Detailed biographical information concerning the larger part of his life is scanty and the vast majority of extant letters cover only slightly more than his last ten years. Virtually all that is known of Jaeger's earlier life is contained in two articles that appeared after his death, one a brief and anonymous obituary in the Musical Times, the other a longer article in the Spectator by a longstanding friend, the musical enthusiast and writer, Charles Larcom Graves.2 In the circumstances it seems possible to do no more than attempt to sketch in various kinds of background to Jaeger's lost years He was born on 18 March 1860, the third son of the ten children of Gottfried and Caroline Jaeger of Dusseldorf, in what was then Western Prussia. The family name is based on the German word for hunter, and may have associations with towns named Jaegerndorf in Bavaria or Silesia; although it is a documented Jewish surname, there is no evidence that the family was of Jewish descent. There were to be alto­ gether three boys and seven girls, although only three of August's sisters survived to undertake the journey to England in the late 1870s; one of them, Joanna, later remembered the large family living in a house on the Reichstrasse, in the Neustadt area of the city, near the corner with the adjacent Elizabethstrasse. The house was opposite a park with a lake, the Schwanenspiegel, where the children skated in winter. It was a fairly central, prosperous part of town, close to the famous Kõnigsallee on the one hand and the Rhine on the other, offering cherished associations with musical figures such as the Schumanns, Brahms and Joachim. One of August's early musical experiences consisted of following the processions of military bands, and a special memory was of childish pride in being allowed to hold the music of one of the players; Basil Maine found in this a symbol of his whole life.3 But there was a less pleasant military accompaniment to Jaeger's childhood after the appointment of the ruthless and opportunist Otto von Bismarck as Chief Minister in 1862. Over the next eight years he fought three wars to enlarge Prussian territories and create a unified German state under Prussian control. Earlier the Rhineland had been a French possession, governed under French law, and the majority of its population wished to maintain that tradition and belong to France permanently. The new adjustment was hard to make, especially as in 1871 Bismarck became Imperial Chancellor, domi­ nating Germany for nearly two decades with an increasingly harsh and corrupt regime. It was a process not without significance for the cultural and scientific life of England and America. 1860-95: Dusseldorf to London 5

The young August attended a Protestant school on the Bilkerstrasse, where the Schumanns had lived, and remained enough of a Protestant to have a portrait of Martin Luther in his house in Kensington, although he would claim to be father an Agnostic than anything else'. This would have been an elementary school, or Volks- chule, where he would have received an efficient training in literacy - at which German schools of that period were notably more successful than those of England or France - together with instruction in religion, arithmetic and singing. The majority of children spent all of their eight years of education at the Volkschulen, and were not expected to progress to any kind of higher education, although Jaeger passed into the Gymnasium,4 a measure of his abilities. Such establishments featured an emphasis on language teaching, and his later mastery of English must have its foundations here. Possibly he was educated specifically for a business career, for English was the language of commerce; but Jaeger's command of the language went far beyond the merely functional, and he may have studied classics, for he liked to sprinkle his reviews with favourite Latin phrases. But a university education would have been too expensive and socially elitist for the sons of the lower middle classes, and the Jaegers may have felt that in this area as no doubt in others, Germany under Bismarck was a land of limited opportunity. But certainly the zeal with which the basic skills were taught to this able youngster meant that he would become sufficiently well equipped to find initial employment in England as a clerk, to say nothing of the eloquence he would later be able to summon in pursuit of his encouragement of others. It must have been music above all that became the focus of his efforts and enthu­ siasm, and Jaeger evidently made the most of instrumental tuition, becoming 'an able pianist and a brilliant violinist,5 but his father made him promise that he would not perform in public. Whether this suggests a philistine and authoritarian parent, or just time-honoured concerns about the security of music as a career, it may have been partly the making of the son, by leading him to sublimate the performer into the broader musician and ultimately, the critic. Jaeger would later claim that his piano- playing had been entirely self-taught, and often emphasized the amateur nature of his musical attainments and the inadequate extent of his education generally. Dusseldorf itself could boast a long and proud musical history. In 1614 the Count Palatine had taken up residence in the city and many Italian musicians, including Giacomo Carissimi, were attracted to his Court. Under the Elector Johann Wilhelm (1692-1716), to whom Corelli dedicated his last Concerti Grossi, the city gained an international status as a musical centre. The celebrated composer and diplomat Agostino Steffani directed the Opera, and in 1711 Handel himself visited, to engage the services of the singer Baldassari for the London stage. Early in the nineteenth century local music lovers keen to perform large-scale works founded a musical society which made its contribution to the inauguration of the Lower Rhine Festival. This became a triennial three-day Festival held alternately at Dusseldorf, Aix-la-Chapelle and Cologne, a pattern resembling that of the English Three Choirs Festivals with which Jaeger would be associated. Felix Mendelssohn was invited to conduct the fifteenth Festival, that of 1833 at Dusseldorf, and such 6 August Jaeger. Portrait ofNimrvd was his success that the city offered him a three-year appointment to supervise its musical life, sacred and secular. The composer was unhappy as Intendant of the Opera, and the appointment did not run its full course, but before his removal to the Leipzig Gewandhaus, Mendelssohn had made sure to produce as many performances as he could of works by Palestrina, Bach, Handel, Mozart, Cherubini and Beethoven, and he continued to conduct at the Festivals, introducing his St Paul'at Dusseldorf in 1836. Mendelssohn's successors, Julius Rietz and Ferdinand Hiller, continued to main­ tain the city's choral and orchestral forces until Robert Schumann took over the post of Kapellmeister in 1850. After initial success, the appointment ended sadly when his weakness as a conductor became apparent, and with the onset of the mental illness which led to an attempted suicide. Yet Schumann's Dusseldorf years saw the compo­ sition and first performance of the Rhenish Symphony, together with much evidence of his determination to help young unknown composers, most notably Johannes Brahms, who arrived in the autumn of 1853 with a letter of introduction from Joachim. Schumann's reply included the phrase, 'This is he who was to come', and went on to praise the young composer in a highly eulogistic newspaper article. The model of the musician-writer Schumann may not have been lost on August Jaeger, nor such a precedent of the discovery of new genius. Musical life continued to flourish during the 1860s, a decade which saw the foun­ dation of a municipal orchestra, led for part of the period by Leopold Auer, and the inauguration of the Tonhalle, the city's concert hall. The Lower Rhine Festivals continued to attract leading figures such as Jenny Lind, Joachim, Anton Rubenstein, Brahms, Hans Richter and Richard Strauss. , who had studied widely in Cologne and Berlin, Italy and Paris, was appointed musical director of Dusseldorf in 1890. His interest in promoting the contemporary as well as the established repertoire may have been the basis for his friendship with August Jaeger, a friendship which would have significant results for at least one composer. Jaeger retained a life-long affection for the city of his birth, which in addition to its musical eminence, was the home of a distinguished school of painters6 and the birthplace of Heinrich Heine, the Jewish poet and writer whose lyrics were set by Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and Wolf, among many others, and whose stories provided the bases for Wagner's The Flying Dutchman and Tannhàuser. Jaeger would have known of Heine's failure to settle happily into the business career planned for him, his dislike of German chauvinistic nationalism and of his lengthy sojourn in a more liberal environment abroad. Jaeger's later references to the poet, even if very occasional, lead one to suspect that Heine might have provided a model in other ways, artistic and political. Like Heine, Jaeger would show himself to be something of an escapist Romantic with a craving for beauty and a need to express strong and immediate feelings. Even in his largely workaday world, Jaeger would be able to share something of Heine's unrestricted, hedonistic enjoyment of life, and at the end, both men suffered from a similar, cruel illness and longed to be done with life. Both men were enemies of tradition in their respective arts, and one or two passing references 1860-95: Dusseldorf to London 7 in Jaeger's letters might demonstrate that he, like Heine, was somewhat antagonistic to the clergy and the aristocracy. Bismarck was a believer in giving way over unimportant matters. Prussian laws granted much municipal autonomy, and developing civic pride ensured that Dussel­ dorf itself became a place of genuine beauty. îh common with other German cities, it became noted for a carefully planned layout, boasting tidy parks, gardens and tree- lined boulevards, with transport systems, housing projects and public health meas­ ures to match. A centrally located Hofgarten, the relic of Residenzstadt days, earned Dusseldorf its 'Garden City' nickname. Jaeger often revisited it and encouraged his friends to do likewise. Writing to the Musical Times the year before his death, he mingled schoolboy memories of the city with musical associations. Being a Düsseldorfer, I was much interested in the Foreign Note in your September issue which stated that a tablet is to be affixed to the house in the Eilkerstrasse, in which the Schumanns lived for three years. Only I could not remember any Eilker Street in the fair garden city on the Rhine. Then it struck me that no doubt the Bilkerstrasse, named after the suburb Bilk, was meant That street I know well, for as a little boy I went to school there. I connect it in my mind chiefly with sundry canings - no doubt well deserved - that I received, and with a fascinating baker's shop where we children used to spend our Pfennigs on capfuls of broken pieces of confectionery. Perchance it was the identical shop that supplied bread and cakes to the Schumanns some years before I patronized it to the tune of an occasional farthing. Rather a dull street my memory recalls, but it leads at right angles to the Haroldstrasse, facing the ornamental water, the Schwanenspiegel, where Joseph Joachim lived for a time in 1855 in rooms procured for him by his young friend Johannes Brahms. The latter was then living in Dusseldorf, so as to be near Frau Clara Schumann in her great trouble and anxiety due to her husband's tragic illness. Joachim's rooms would be within two or three minutes' walk from the Schumanns' house. I can well believe Herr Kalbeck's statement in Vol 1 of his Brahms biography, that many Düsseldorfers would foregather on the promenade along the Schwanenspiegel, outside Joachim's rooms, to listen to the performances of quartets and other chamber music given by the young master-fiddler, his pupil K. L. Bargeer, a Danish friend, Waldemar Tofte, and a cultured amateur, Herr Assessor von Diest, who lived in the same house as Joachim, and was a violoncellist of sufficient excellence to play at the Lower Rhenish Festivals at the first desk.7

Von Diest seems to have been a friend of Jaeger and only too pleased to tap into a rich memory of Dusseldorf s musical lore, especially when it involved anecdotes of the great. We may be sure that young Brahms — 'der blonde Johannes' as his friends called him — profited greatly by these performances under so gifted a leader, for he had not previously enjoyed many chances of hearing classical chamber music. He would sit in the corner of the sofa, cover his eyes with his hand and utter never a word. Once, says Herr von Diest, during the playing of a Mozart Adagio he suddenly jumped up, walked with heavy steps to the door, and closed it behind him with a bang. He had felt like one seasick, he after­ wards explained to Joachim, who remonstrated with him for his 'rudeness'; he could not possibly listen to another note, he was too full of music! When a pianoforte was required for the performances, the party met at Frau Schumann's house. Brahms generally played the pianoforte part on these occasions, the hostess explaining her reluctance to take a share in the performances by remarking to Herr von Diest: 'I do not like to play when 8 August Jaeger: Portrait ofNimrod

Brahms is present. He is too severe a critic; and, alas, he is always right\ While they are about it, why do not the Düsseldorfers affix a tablet to the house in the Schadowplatz where young Brahms lived at what was a turning point in his career? Are they perhaps ashamed of the notorious fact that when a new Musikdirector had to be chosen in succession to Robert Schumann, they preferred a nonentity like Julius Tausch to the younger genius then living in their midst who had been hailed as a 'strong fighter' and the coming man in the clarion-tones of Schumann's famous *Neue Bahnen* article?8 It must have been a difficult step to leave the richness of Dusseldorf s musical life for a country that was later to be dubbed the 'Land without Music', yet August Jaeger was so keen to leave Germany for England that he was granted a passport in 1875, when he was only fifteen. Political conditions were starting to create a regular exodus to Great Britain and the United States, as Bismarck's authoritarianism made itself felt. Perhaps England's lack of advanced development in musical art was compensated for by its greater tolerance, freedom under the law, and parliamentary democracy. Bismarck's domestic policy, by contrast, centred on the subjugation of the people through the creation of what might now be called a police state, with every emphasis on the suppression of political opposition. It is evident that the Jaeger family quitted Germany late in 1878, just three months after the passing of harsh anti-Socialist laws and in a year which saw a flood of emigration. The aggressive nationalism which had supported Bismarck's earlier territorial aggrandisement turned inwards, towards various minorities, religious and racial as well as political. During the 1870s, he initi- tated an ideological war, the Kulturkampf, against the Roman Catholic Church, because of its prior claim over purely secular authority on the obedience of the citizen. The Jesuits were expelled, and priests throughout the Reich were forbidden to refer to politics in their sermons; legislation led to the subjection of Church to State, and many priests were imprisoned. And if Bismarck's antisemitism was less extreme in effect than Hitler's, it was no less so in underlying philosophy. Organized German antisemitism seems to have emerged suddenly in the 1870s, fuelled by fluctuations in the economy, and became a focal point for discontented elements seeking scapegoats. Some five hundred publications on the 'Jewish Question' appeared between 1873 and 1890, and antisemitic associations and parties mushroomed. Bismarck used such feel­ ings for his own purposes, and a third of the 30,000 Poles expelled from eastern Prussia in 1885 were Jews. His son Herbert, Secretary of State at the German Foreign Office, was openly and virulently anti-Jewish, and through such endorsement antisemitism became socially acceptable and respectable at Court. It percolated through society, including the army and the educational world, even the universities. However, admiration for the achievements of German imperialism ran deep and wide, even in the musical world. Brahms would say that the two most important events in his life were the Bachgesellschaft Edition and Bismarck's creation of the German Empire. Bismarck was eventually forced to resign by Kaiser Wilhelm in 1890. Hans von Bulow, after conducting a performance of the Eroica symphony in Berlin, dedicated it to the ex-Chancellor and made a speech referring to him as 'the Beethoven of German polities'. 1860-95: Dusseldorf to hondón 9

England, meanwhile, prided itself on many freedoms and boasted a reputation for unconditional hospitality to all: between 1823 and 1906 no person who came to her shores was denied entry; partly through economic self-interest, partly through liberal principle, Britain became the most reliable refuge in the world. The arrival in Britain of Prince Albert seemed to set a particular establishment imprimatur on German life and culture. Many of his fellow-countrymen, often Jewish, musical and otherwise, followed in his footsteps to escape the Bismarckian evils. Their contributions to English life were in many cases outstanding and many remain household names. Sigmund Freud enjoyed a family visit in the 1870s and envied his half-brother's freedoms. Longer sojourns were enjoyed by Karl Marx, who made industrious use of his freedom in the British Library Reading Room, and his associate Frederick Engels, who was glad to escape arrest on account of his political activities in Germany. Other noted scholars included the Shakespearians Israel Gollancz and Frederick Boas, and scientists such as Arthur Schuster of Manchester University. Reuter arrived in 1851 and went on to establish his stake in the press. Michael Marks opened his first shop in Manchester, subsequently forming a partnership with Tom Spencer, and Montague Burton began to manufacture clothes for sale in his shops. The worlds of science and industry were represented by Hugo Hirst, who founded GEC, Ludwig Mond who laid the foundations of ICI, and Gustav Wolff who together with Edward Harland created the Belfast shipyard. In merchant banking the Rothschilds were powerful figures of long standing, and Sir Ernest Cassei, who had started as an immi­ grant clerk in Liverpool at the age of sixteen, went on to become wealthy enough to sustain the monarchy by his assistance to Edward VII, as well as helping to establish the London School of Economics. Edgar Speyer, the banker, subsidised Henry Wood's Promenade Concerts for fourteen years, and was responsible for the Queen's Hall Orchestra Endowment Fund. The presence at varying times in England of such figures as Felix Mendelssohn, Charles Hallé, Edward Dannreuther, Otto Gold- schmidt, Joseph Joachim, George Henschel, August Manns and Hans Rich ter greatly enriched musical life, and when Edward Elgar achieved his first emergence as a composer he received immediate and continuing support from cultured businessmen of German extraction such as Edgar Speyer, Frank Schuster and Alfred Rodewald. So there would seem to have been every reason for the Jaeger family to be anxious to escape the Second Reich and move to a country which offered everyday freedoms together with scope for economic betterment. They arrived in December 1878, the year in which otherwise August would presumably have left school and started his compulsory year's military service. He never forgot the military arrogance of the country he had left behind, and was prescient of where it would lead. His nephew wrote later, 'Jaeger ... used to impress my father by passionately denouncing the refusal of British politicians to recognise that "Der Tag" was inevitable.'9 Germans formed the largest immigrant group in England, and there were established areas of settlement in Manchester and Bradford, where Julius Delius had founded his wool business. But London was the major centre and is almost certain to have been the Jaegers' immediate destination; August Jaeger, somehow by nature it might seem a 10 August Jaeger. Portrait ofNimrod suburban creature, breathed its polluted air for the rest of his life. It was where so much music was to be heard, after all. The family's security would not have been helped by the death of Gottfried Jaeger in March 1880, some fifteen months after his arrival. His death certificate shows the family living in the Caledonian Road, Islington, and gives his profession as cattle dealer; the census of the following year gives the family at another address, Stock Orchard Crescent, in the same borough. Islington was an area of some degree of settlement by Germans, with a community of immigrant tradesmen, craftsmen, teachers and academics; it contained also the Metropolitan Cattle Market, where the Post Office London Directory for 1888 lists the firm of Jager, Sheep Salesmen, at Bank Buildings. This may be a connection, for the 1881 Census showed the profes­ sions of both of August's brothers as being involved in the meat trade, following in their father's footsteps. The eldest, Carl, head of the family now at 23, was described as an 'assistant foreign cattle salesman', while William, 19, was an 'apprentice butcher'. Carl would predecease August, succumbing to a similar tubercular disease, with the possibility of an initial bovine infection affecting both. But the resilience of youth helped the brothers, together with the 21-year-old August, recorded by the census as a clerk, to support their mother and three sisters. To further assist the family economy, the household contained a boarder, one David Davis. Presumably the girls — Emma, 26, Joanna, 17, and Marie, 12, — were supported as long as neces­ sary. Marie would have needed to finish her education, perhaps at the German school at Islington; she later became a successful language teacher working from her home at Orme Court, Bayswater. Joanna seems to have adopted no profession, spending her life helping to look after a variety of relatives and in-laws, a family treasure. The census form gave Caroline Jaeger's age as 54 but she would outlive August, who shouldered his share of family responsibility by taking her under his own roof. His frequent complaints of lack of money begin to ring true when the extent of his responsibilities is realized. August stands apart from his tradesmen father and brothers somewhat in having joined the ranks of the German clerks, evidence perhaps of greater natural abilities and wider ambitions. Possibly too, other members of the family did not share his passion for music; the resulting emotional isolation may have drawn him further into his chosen path, a mission to explain. Jaeger's clerkship was with the firm of George Washington Bacon & Co., 'Map and Chart Sellers and Publishers, Map Mounters and Map Engravers', of 127 The Strand, an address shared with three other publishers and a cigar merchant. Although Graves thought that Jaeger was not happy there, the atmosphere seems to have been pleas­ ingly unconventional if not somewhat eccentric. Other interests were pursued as well as maps, with Bacon introducing his 'Patent Domestic Gymnasium', guaranteed to 'cultivate strength, develop muscles, and ensure perfect health'. He followed this up by writing and publishing a series of health booklets, such as 'Our Colds: How Caught, Prevented and Cured', and 'Keeping Young and Well'; Bacon appears to have vindicated his theories by reaching the age of 92. There were also teaching aids for use 1860-95: Dusseldorf to London 11 in schools - the Education Act of 1870 making attendance compulsory up to the age of 13 had opened up new markets - and many maps. Bacon's eye for an opportunity led him to cater for a variety of requirements, including those of the railway traveller ('Bacon's New Railway Map of London & Suburbs Showing each Company's line in a Separate Character'), the cyclist ('Bacon's Cycle Road Map of 150 Miles round London'), and even the temperance movement ('Bacon's New Map of London: The Modem Plague of London, Showing the Public Houses as specified in the London Directory'); but the firm's most notable map publication during Jaeger's time was the 1888 'New Large Scale Ordnance Atlas of London & Suburbs', which became a classic of its kind, unequalled in the extent of the area covered and the amount of information and data provided, from the number of London's gas lamps to the number of passengers carried on the underground per year. Whatever Jaeger's precise rôle in the firm, such an exercise might have interested him, for he had an obsessive eye for detail; but it is difficult to see such a line of employment satisfying him on a deeper level.10

But in London there was always music. If violin and piano playing were confined to the domestic circle, there were plenty of opportunities for choral singing. Jaeger joined the Novello Oratorio Choir, conducted by Sir Alexander Mackenzie, in 1885, the year of its formation. There he began a long-lived friendship with his fellow tenor, Charles Graves, partly on the basis of a shared enthusiasm for Brahms. 'Jaeger had no pretensions to be regarded as a singer, and used to compare his voice to a tenor trombone at full blast', wrote Graves later. Both men also belonged to another amateur choir, named after and conducted by Hans Richter, and consisting largely of German expatriates. Again Graves recalls, Meanwhile, I had joined one of the worst and the most interesting choirs in London - the old Richter choir, which was periodically mobilized to assist in the performances of the Choral Symphony, Bach's Magnificat', Brahms's 'Alt-Rhapsodie', and the few other choral works which were included in Richter's repertory. I have called it the old Richter choir for various reasons — partly because it was got together many years ago, partly because of the venerable aspect of the cosmopolitan enthusiasts who composed it Their voices were like Beethoven's — excruciating — but they were many of them good musicians, and made up in fervour what they lacked in freshness ... the great attraction of the choir to me was the privilege which it conferred upon the members of attending the orchestral rehearsals and watching Richter at work with his band - a most illumi­ nating experience. That was something like a revelation, and though in the main a serious business, the proceedings were frequently enlivened by ludicrous 'obiter dicta' from Richter, of which the famous comment on a very tame reading of the 'Venusberg' music is perhaps the best known: 'Gendemen, you play it as if you were teetotallers - whichjou are not!Al No doubt Jaeger also enjoyed the opportunity of working under such a celebrated conductor as Richter, his status further enhanced by his close association with Richard Wagner. Later Jaeger would write in the Musical Times, 'we have ourselves on many 12 August Jaeger Portrait o/Nimrvd occasions been under the spell of that genial eye of Dr. Richter's, and know that he can effect more with a look than some conductors can with hands, and feet, and baton.'12 Jaeger also recalled singing in the Novello Oratorio Choir with Graves in the first London performance of Parry's Judith at St James's Hall on 6 December 1888. It was an early encounter with the music of a man who was to play a significant role in his life. And if he attended the first performance of Parry's Fourth Symphony at a Richter Concert on Monday, 1 July 1889, Jaeger would have shared the experience with Edward Elgar. No doubt their paths crossed on various occasions during Elgar's year of concert-going in London after his marriage. No one, least of all August Jaeger himself, could have foreseen the role that an obscure music-loving German clerk would have in the lives of these two composers and in the music of one of them in particular. In pursuit of musical self-education Jaeger attended as many of London's concerts during this period as his pocket would allow, and sometimes more, economizing as much as he could. He was remembered as one of a group of young and enthusiastic music-lovers regularly to be found in a particular comer of the gallery in the old St James's Hall, Regent Street, with its statues of the Muses, many small chandeliers and composers' names inscribed in letters of gold on red panels round the walls. There he would have been able to follow the Richter Concerts, with their revelatory programmes of German music classical, romantic and modern (up to Strauss and Bruckner in the later days), Berlioz, Dvorak and Tchaikovsky, together with works by contemporary English composers such as Parry, Stanford, Cowen and Mackenzie. The formidable Richter set new standards for English audiences, conducting from memory in an undemonstrative style lacking all ostentation. At St James's Hall, too, were held the Monday and Saturday Popular Concerts of chamber music, where Joachim and Clara Schumann were only the most distinguished of the many first-rate artists to be heard from the gallery for a shilling. The musical repertore was wide - again including new works by English composers - and the analytical programme notes provided excellent value for those of enquiring mind. And it was at this hall, just over ten years to the day after the Parry Fourth Symphony première, that Jaeger would hear the first performance of Elgar's Enigma Variations. Further afield were the Crystal Palace Saturday concerts under August Manns, and the programmes of the Philharmonic Society, the Royal Albert Hall Concert Society, the Bach Society and the various opera companies. An outstanding musical experience in these largely undocumented years was provided by the Wagner season which took place in London during 1882. Angelo Neumann presented three complete cycles of The Ring of the Nibelungs at His Majesty's Theatre during May, the first to be presented in London. The production, conducted by Anton Seidl, used scenery from Bayreuth and included several singers who had taken part in the original performances of 1876, including Lilli Lehmann. Before the month was out, Hans Richter himself embarked on a season at Drury Lane, again with German singers, and including performances of Lohengrin, The Flying Dutchman, and Tannhàuser together with the English premières of Mastersingers and Tristan. Between them Seidl and Richter conducted some forty performances and opened up 1860-95: Dusseldorf to London 13 new horizons in English appreciation of Wagner singing and performance. Jaeger followed the performances keenly, for they provided his first opportunity to hear Wagner's music-dramas. His tendency to hero-worship led to a deep admiration of Wagner, although he was evidendy broad-minded enough in his approach not to allow this to put Brahms and his music out of court. But in many of his later musical judgements, Wagner was the supreme yardstick. No doubt Jaeger particularly enjoyed such performances oiMastersingers as he was able to attend; the work meant a great deal to him and its music would sustain him during his final illness. But his determination to enjoy the unprecedented opportuni­ ties for hearing Wagner that year cost Jaeger dear, for he sacrificed food in order to pay for tickets, and he later traced the beginnings of his poor health to this period, an unscientific explanation that a romantic like Jaeger may have found satisfying. It would be only typical of the man to make such a sacrifice, but his commitment to Wagner's art was not shared universally among his new countrymen. The reviewer of the Musical Times, a journal which Jaeger no doubt perused when he could, while by no means withholding from Wagner a due meed of praise, reflected a Victorian response to the story of the Ring.

The character and incidents of the story are naturally much debated - by some from the standpoint of public morality; by others from that of realistic truth. Among the former - if the egoism of the remark be permissible - I number myself. At the same time, I do not forget that Wagner wrote 'Der Ring des Nibelungen' for Germans, and as an embodiment of a new German art. It is possible that even the peculiar Scandinavian- Icelandic-Germanic mixture presented in the great Festival Play commends itself to the patriotic Teuton for whom it was intended. On that point I have small right to speak, and absolutely none to assume the attitude of critic. But when the trilogy, coming out of Germany, appeals to cosmopolitan taste, I am entided to regard it from an extra- German point of view, and, that state of things being in presence, I contend that the story is not edifying - barely, indeed, permissible ... Its characters have to us no more substance than those of a showy pantomime. They are far removed indeed; and belong to a time and to mental and moral conditions which preclude the idea of sympathy and even of human interest ... It is further unfortunate that the moral atmosphere of the drama is offensive.13 Such comments may have proved Jaeger's introduction to the tone of a journal with which he would later be closely associated, and to an approach to the newest music with which he would strongly disagree. It was probably that kind of attitude which led him to describe his adopted land to Elgar on one occasion as 'this tight litde island'.

According to Graves, cJaeger was not in his element in the map-publishing business ... and he gladly availed himself of the offer of employment in the firm of Novello's, to whom he had been recommended by a musical acquaintance'. Graves seems some­ what diffident about his own role in this, for it was he himself who provided the introduction to the firm,14 a kindness that was in the fullness of time to have its 14 August Jaeger. Portrait ofNimrod consequences for English music. Jaeger's appointment to the firm in 1890 was as Chief of the publishing department.15 At this time Novello's had been publishing music for nearly eighty years, and had become one of the largest publishers in the world, with some twenty thousand items on its lists.16 The founder, the organist and scholar Vincent Novello, had originally sought an outlet for his own collections of sacred music, published for the first time with a fully realised accompaniment instead of figured bass. During the 1820s he went on to publish Mozart and Haydn Masses, together with the sacred music of Purcell. The House of Novello formally came into existence in 1830, when it was taken over by Vincent's son Joseph Alfred, who continued to run it for over thirty years. The Victorian period was one of tremendous expansion of the demand for choral music, in which the spread of literacy, the development of 'sol-fa' singing methods, the resurgence of choral services in churches, and the approval of singing as an activity of high moral and social value, all played their part. Alfred Novello saw the business potential here, and satisfied a growing need for sheet music and vocal scores at unprecedentedly low prices. Under his reign, Novello's began to bring out the works of Rossini, Beethoven, Haydn and Handel, sometimes in monthly parts, and an early coup was the outright purchase in 1836 of the English copyright of Mendelssohn's St Paul, a work which successfully established the Novello catalogue. By the late 1850s that catalogue had grown to nearly two hundred pages and included vocal works of every variety, with much of the sacred music that had become the firm's stock-in-trade - oratorios, festival hymns and anthems - together with secular vocal music and a lesser amount of instrumental pieces. Novello began to buy out other firms, and in the 1840s took over the monthly Musical Times magazine and set up the firm's own printing works, where the newer method of printing from movable type was adopted alongside the older practice of using engraved plates. Progress continued during the 1850s with the introduction of a highly successful series of part- songs, glees and madrigals and the opening up of an American market. The firm branched out into the publication of books on musical form, orchestration, harmony, counterpoint and fugue — volumes which were to be found on the shelves of Elgar Brothers of High Street, Worcester, 'Pianoforte and Music Sellers, Tuners, Regula­ tors, Repairers, &c', whence they found their way into the critical hands of the young Edward Elgar. Through the huge numbers of its publications, and its policy of selling cheaply, Novello's influence percolated through all levels of society and began to change the musical, cultural and educational face of England. If the example of Elgar is that of the Victorian principle of self-help par excellence, it was Novello's which provided a great deal of study material for him and counties s others. The business rewards were colossal. Alfred Novello retired in 1861 to the family villa at Genoa. He owned railway stock, shares in the Crystal Palace Company, rights in the Bessemer Iron Process, and the income from various properties in and around London. At his death in 1896 his estate was valued at over £63,000, the equivalent of many millions at today's values. However, the larger part of this sum derived from 1860-95: Dusseldorf to London 15 the astute if unusual method he adopted when selling the firm to Henry Littleton, another self-made man who had started as an office-boy at the age of fourteen and who seems to have been invested by the unmarried Alfred Novello with the rôle of son and heir. On the understanding that the family name would continue, Alfred agreed to sell the business over ten years, during which time he would draw £ 2500 from it every six months. After ten years he would have drawn £ 50,000 and the sale would be complete. Such was Littleton's success that the money was paid off in five years, and in September 1866 he became the sole proprietor of Novello and Company. Expansion continued as another rival, Ewer & Co., was taken over, together with its Mendelssohn copyrights. A circulating Music Library was inaugu­ rated, and new premises, where August Jaeger would spend most of his working life, were acquired at Bemers Street in Soho. It was an address which, as George Wash­ ington Bacon's London map shows, was within walking distance of the Queen's Hall at the end of Regent Street, and Pagani's celebrated restaurant in Great Portland Street - telegrams, 'Soufflé, London'. Jaeger would spend happy hours in both. Littleton further developed his business by becoming something of an impresario, arranging a series of over two hundred concerts during 1873, to be followed the next year by a further series of daily concerts, 'Prom' style, at the Albert Hall. Full of drive and energy, he travelled far and wide in the firm's interests, attending the opening of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus in 1876 and hiring some expert German engravers in Leipzig. 1877 saw him in America, building up Novello's established links there and opening new premises on Broadway. No musician himself, Littleton felt the need of advice, and he appointed Joseph Bamby as music advisor; he was succeeded in 1877 by the Dutch organist, composer and arranger Berthold Tours. Littleton retired in 1886, four years before Jaeger joined the firm. He handed the business over to his two sons, Alfred Henry and Augustus James, and the husbands of his two daughters, George Gill and Henry Brooke. Alfred Henry was in overall charge, becoming the first Chairman of the Board of Directors when the firm was formed into a limited company in 1898. The four men were directors for life, able to come and go as they pleased rather than work standard office hours. Three years later Henry Clayton bought his way on to the Board as Company Secretary. In the main, the members of the Board, like Henry Littleton, were more businessmen than musicians, although Alfred had some musical training and became a man of some culture who gathered collections of early printed music and fine composer portraits. But he gave little specifically musical input to the firm, and neither did his brother Augustus, who was more concerned with the practical binding and printing aspects of the business. Henry Clayton had read law at Cambridge and was some­ thing of a hard-headed expert on matters of copyright. Only with the next genera­ tion would the firm gain a musician as a Director. Harold Brooke, Henry Brooke's son and a good linguist and pianist, joined the editorial department in 1902 after three years at the Leipzig Conservatoire. Later he transferred to the publishing office where he worked with and eventually superseded Jaeger. But in the days when Jaeger joined the firm, the Board of Directors operated in a kind of artistic 16 August jaeger: Portrait ofNimrod vacuum, filled only by their musical advisors and editors Berthold Tours and John E. West. West was an organist and choir trainer who had joined the firm in 1884 and whose contributions included the editing of many services, anthems and madrigals and the arranging of the vocal scores of choral works. Although Tours had had some expe­ rience of the orchestral world as a violinist, both men tended to the musically conservative, and their own activities as composers tended to be confined to the many church anthems they contributed to the pages of the Musical Times. Likewise, the editor of that 'house journal' from 1897 to 1909, Frederick George Edwards, was an organist and scholar with a particular interest in the history and musical associa­ tions of English cathedrals, which formed the subject of many lengthy articles. Edwards was devoted too, to a somewhat heavy-handed style of punning which formed the basis of many shorter contributions, not the kind of humour that appealed to Jaeger, who seems to have felt a complete lack of affinity with Edwards bordering on actual dislike. This was no doubt exacerbated by the older man's devo­ tion to Mendelssohn - the composer with whom Edwards seems to have considered modern music to finish. If Jaeger with his interest in Wagner was something of a musical left-winger, these men added up to a formidable 'establishment', steeped in the English church music tradition. Their tastes were reflected in the hundreds of hymnals, anthems, services, masses, oratorios and cantatas good and bad to be found in the pages of the Novello Catalogue. In the festival oratorio and cantata market in particular, as well as in churches and concert halls up and down the country, Novello's reigned supreme. In response to the demands of the Victorian singing public, they published dozens of works by English composers, covering apparently every familiar and unfamiliar aspect of the Bible. The vast majority of such works are now forgotten, a fate which has also extended to a great deal of the religious music by the foreign composers Novello's were anxious to publish - Spohr, Félicien David, Niels Gade, Liszt, Dvorak. The important foreign composer had a special status in the English system, and when Charles Gounod agreed to compose his oratorio The Redemption for the Birmingham Festival of 1882, it was in return for a then unheard of fee of ¿4000; Henry Littleton subsequendy bought the copyright for £3250 and went on to make a profit out of a work that was thought of at the time as the greatest religious masterpiece of the century. Three years later he was happy to pay the same figure for another now rarely played Gounod work, Mors et Vita. With its unique position, Novello's was a firm that Jaeger felt proud and excited to work for, but it was not destined to be a consistently smooth and happy relation­ ship. As was his nature, Jaeger would give the firm the total commitment of his time, energy and enthusiasm, and his rôle of Publishing Office Manager, with responsi­ bility for overseeing the publication of a wide range of music - including, most importantly, accurate orchestral and vocal scores and instrumental parts against festival and rehearsal deadlines — was only the most narrow definition of his position. His judgement and initiative gradually enabled him to become another, unofficial music advisor to the firm, with different perspectives from West and Tours. He came 1860-95: Dusseldorf to hondón 17 to feel, however, that he was regarded as little more than a clerk and that he deserved better from the firm in terms of recognition, salary and status. He was understandably frustrated too, when his contributions to the Musical Times, over which he took great trouble, were ignored, cut or altered to suit opinions which he did not share. There can be no doubt that in August Jaeger, Novello's gained an employee with a range of qualities which were assets to them. He had publishing experience, musical knowledge, and spoke German. This would be most helpful in dealing with German engravers on the staff and abroad, and in dealing with the leading musicians of his native land. Jaeger was therefore able to act confidently as the firm's musical ambas­ sador at the great German Festivals, showing charm, tact and diplomacy when dealing with those of'artistic tempérament', to say nothing of the Novello's management. But with his musical tastes firmly rooted in the world of the modem German masters, he could not have felt entirely satisfied with Novello's musical horizons and this inevi­ tably led to friction. It is a reasonable assumption to make that Jaeger gradually defined for himself a role within the firm that would improve matters musically and make use of his more cosmopolitan background; he would seek out and encourage new composers, and in particular he would make it his particular mission to discover and nurture the figure that England lacked above all — a truly great composer. At that time, a climate of opinion seemed to be developing in the minds of various writers and musicians that such a composer must come. In his notebook for 1890, George Grove made this entry: While not an English mountain we behold By the celestial Muses glorified'. So said Wordsworth ... and so we might say of English music, too. The giants Bach and Beethoven and Schubert have taken away all our praise from us, but Wordsworth himself altered the fact as to the mountains, and some one is sure to come and alter it as to music.17 Much earlier, the pre-eminence of the foreign composer had been noted by William Henry, father of Edward and senior partner of Elgar Brothers, in an edition of the hand-written 'Worcester Papers' which were circulated among the family for information, amusement and thoughtful consideration during the 1850s. ... I consider that the English stand rather in the background as far as regards Musical affairs ... Comparatively speaking how very few English composers are there when we look at the superior number of foreign ... before I conclude allow me to say that I hope the time is not very far distant when England in all her glory will stand pre-eminent, at least in Musical Affairs.18 Writing some 40 years later, in an opera review written for 'The World', Bernard Shaw could find nothing in English music since Purcell: I wonder how soon strong men in England will begin to take to musical composition. It cannot be said that the national genius is for the genteel, the sentimental, the elegant, the superficial. When I am asked to name a composer who is to England what Wagner is to Germany, I do not cite our elderly imitators of Spohr and Mendelssohn, or our youthful imitators of Gounod: I have to go back to Henry Purcell, whose Yorkshire 18 August Jaeger. Portrait ofNimrod

Feast suggests that if he were alive today he might give us an English equivalent to Die Meistersinger. There is a general notion that painting tastes better before dinner, and music after it; but neither is supposed to be in the least nutritious. Too great a regard for them is held to be the mark of a weak character ... Under these circumstances we are kept well supplied with pretty things; but if we want really national music-dramas we shall have to take art seriously, or else wait for the advent of a genius big enough and strong enough to set himself against us all and cram his ideas down our throats ...19

Composers themselves felt the need for a leader. Granville Bantock selflessly mounted a concert of works by younger British composers at the Queen's Hall in December 1896. His programme note for the occasion was couched in terms with an almost Old Testament prophetic ring about them:

For the moment any spirit of commercialism is set aside, and the predominant desire has been to advance the cause of British music ... there is no reason why the concert- rooms of this country should be empty when native music is performed; and when that British composer whose coming we await, does arrive, it will be well for his fellow- countrymen to be ready with the bread instead of waiting to place the traditional stone over his grave. Those whose privilege it is to go before, to form as it were the stepping- stones for the god who is to follow, have their little share in their life-time, even though they may be forgotten hereafter; they will continue to work in hope as long as earnest­ ness brings no disgrace, and enthusiasm casts no slur.20

And in his 'Music and Morals', the writer and essayist the Reverend H.R. Haweis, while remarking on the enormous variety of taste shown by the English music-loving public, considered that:

It may be that we are on the eve of a creative period in the history of English music. This confusion of idea may be nothing but the coming together of what will by-and-by develop into our national school. This eclectic taste, which at times looks much like chaos, may also be the ferment out of which a new and beautiful life is ready to be born. As an original artist will be caught and absorbed by one influence after another, being possessed by his art long before he learns to possess himself, — as he will at times appear to be swayed to and fro by various distinct impulses, without being able to bring them into harmonious relationship, - as we may watch him year by year melting down one style after another in the crucible of his genius, until he has gained fine gold, and stamped it with his own image, even so we seem to see England now calling in the musical currencies of the world, whch she may before long re-issue with the hall-mark of her own originality and genius.21

It was written in fine Victorian-clergyman terms, but it amounted to a not inap­ propriate explanation of the gradual and eclectic nature of Elgar's development as a composer. Novello's began to have dealings with him in 1890 through Berthold Tours, and it was to be some time before Jaeger was asked to continue the relation­ ship. In the early 1890s a younger figure, stall a student at the Royal College of Music, seemed to Jaeger to be the most likely candidate for the rôle of Bantock's 'British composer whose coming we await': his name was Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Ironically, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was described in Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians22 as 'a composer whose marked individuality seemed to be peculiarly the 1860-95: Dusseldorf to London 19 product of his mixed race*. His father was a West African who qualified in medicine at King's College London and who subsequently left England for Sierra Leone, having suffered poor treatment on account of his colour. Mother and child took up residence in Croydon, where one day - so the story goes - a leading local music teacher and conductor, Samuel Beckwith, found the small boy playing marbles on the pavement while clutching a newly-acquired violin. Beckwith improved the lad's playing, and another local benefactor welcomed him to a church choir and trained his voice. The family were not well off, and there was some question of the youngster being apprenticed to a piano-tuner, but George Grove admitted the gifted pupil to the Royal College of Music when he left school at the age of fifteen in 1890, and he was to remain there for seven years, sustained by various prizes and scholarships in addition to continued support from various Croydon friends. As well as the priva­ tions of limited means, the curly-haired, dark-skinned Coleridge-Taylor suffered taunts and insults on account of his colour, at the College itself as well as on the streets of Croydon. He began as a violin student at the College but his true bent was for composition, and towards the end of 1892 Grove permitted him to make it his principal study under Charles Stanford, who became the idol of the shy and mild-mannered student. With Coleridge-Taylor, Stanford may have somewhat modified the stimulating harshness whch was his stock-in-trade as a teacher; on one occasion after overhearing a racial comment by another student, the Irishman put his arm round the victim, took him to his room, and gave kindly reassurance and understanding. By that time, Coleridge-Taylor had already had five Anthems published by Novello, perhaps the earliest sign of Jaeger's interest in his music. The 1890s saw many famous names of the future as students at the Royal College, including Thomas Dunhill, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Hoist and William Hurlstone, but in the short term Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's star outshone them all. Year by year as a student he produced compositions of impressive quality and assurance - songs, chamber works, music for violin and orchestra, and a symphony. Jaeger seems to have become a staff writer for the Musical Times two or three years after joining Novello's,23 prob­ ably beginning with the compilation of the 'Foreign Notes', brief listings of musical events abroad culled from the foreign press; he remained particulady well informed of music and criticism on the continent. While it is not always possible to identify his often anonymous writings for that journal, it is possible with hindsight to be reason­ ably confident in ascribing authorship to him when a young composer's works are praised in enthusiastic terms. Inevitably he focused on the London concerts and would have made sure he kept himself well informed about emerging student composers at the major colleges of music. There was a special encouragement, too, for Jaeger to follow events at the Royal College of Music, in the form of a growing friendship with Isabella Donkersley, a talented violin student. Jaeger's keen patronage of Coleridge-Taylor seems to have mounted with each succeeding work, and his Musical Times reviews of the College Concerts were full of praise. Of the Nonet for piano, strings and wind, first performed in July 1894, he wrote: 20 August Jaeger Portrait ofNimrod

It is quite unnecessary to find fault with Mr. Taylor's ambition, both because experience will soon correct that failing and because there is such striking merit in his work as furnishes an excellent excuse. The whole Nonet is most interesting, its themes are fresh and vigorous, and their treatment proves that the writer has learned to compose with freedom and to treat with skill. The Scherbo is unquestionably the most striking move­ ment, and few would guess it to be the work of one still a student. We shall look for further work from Mr. Taylor with great interest.24 It was perfectly characteristic of Jaeger that he should praise first of all the quality of the thematic invention, and Coleridge-Taylor's was often compared to Dvorak's. A review from the following year of a setting of words by Lockhart for soprano and orchestra showed that Coleridge-Taylor was also able to succeed in another of Jaeger's priorities, orchestration. This was the work of Mr. S. Coleridge-Taylor - a scholar of the College, who is already known by a number of compositions published during the last few years. The Ballad in question displays decided talent, the orchestration especially being full of felicitous touches. It was sung by Miss Clementine M. Pierpoint, whose clear, high soprano told well in Mr. Taylor's music. The orchestra was not in its best form; slips were not infre­ quent, and we have often heard Professor Stanford's young people play with greater finish and refinement.25 Professor Stanford would not have liked that. But 1895 proved an excellent year for his pupil, with much more music performed and well received. March saw his five Fantasiestücke for played at the College, and this work measured up to another of Jaeger's yardsticks, individuality: 'Mr. Coleridge-Taylor is a rara avis among students, for he has something to say that is worth saying, and he does so in his own individual way. Considering the lamentable dearth of good string quartet music by native composers, his Fantasiestücke should be in request ...'26 The première took place in July of one of the masterpieces among Coleridge-Taylor's early works, his Clarinet Quintet. Jaeger's notice in the Musical Times — dignified by another classical quotation - reflected delight and admiration, and placed the work in the context of English music.

The Chamber Concert of the 10th ult. proved of quite exceptional interest by the production of a Quintet for clarinet and strings by Mr. S. Coleridge-Taylor. To do justice to this work we deliberately apply a different standard from that which pupils' compositions are generally judged. There is little or nothing in Mr. Taylor's Quintet to betray the fact that he is still in statupupillaris. His is, indeed, an achievement, not merely a 'promise'. Mr. Taylor's themes are his own, and very interesting and unconventional the majority are, while the ease with which he handles the difficult form, the freedom and artistic balance of his part-writing, and, even more, the variety and originality of his rhythms, are quite remarkable in one so young. Nor are the higher qualities of imagina­ tion and emotion wanting, without which mere cleverness counts for but little. They are most conspicuous in the fine, terse opening Allegro enérgico, and in the Romance {Larghetto affetuoso), which is as poetic and suggestive a movement as is to be found in English music. In the Scherbo a most complicated rhythm is handled with masterly ease, and in the Finale (Allegro con Fuoco) the two-bar rhythm of a theme à la Dvorak, kept up with strenuous persistence, produces a most spirited effect Towards the close the 1860-95: Dusseldorf to London 21

expressive theme of the slow movement creeps in unexpectedly and helps to bring the work to a worthy close.27 The Quintet was acclaimed by Stanford and taken up by Joachim in Berlin, although it had to wait until 1974 for publication and until 1990 for a recording. Finally in 1895, Novello's brought out Coleridge-Taylor's Ballade in D minor, for Violin and Orchestra. Isabella Donkersley gave its first performance, with piano accompaniment, at Kensington Town Hall that year, and Jaeger told her, 'I have long been looking for an English composer of real genius and believe I have found him'.28 Novello's published the work in an arrangement for violin and piano, an almost unheard-of success for a 20-year-old composer still a student, no doubt the result of persuasive advocacy on Jaeger's part. The following year saw the performance of three movements of the symphony (in a performance which featured Hoist playing the trombone and Vaughan Williams the triangle), a string quartet, and, an indication of future inspirations, Hiawathan Sketches for violin and piano and Five Southern Love Songs, settings of Longfellow.

Isabella Donkersley was a talented Yorkshire girl, from a long-established family of wool-traders of Honley, near Huddersfield. She was born and brought up together with her musical elder sister Lucy, at Ivy Cottage, a delightful family home built into the hillside, with impressive views of Magdale below. She was a student at the Royal College of Music between 1884 and 1890, studying violin under Henry Holmes, Professor of Violin since the College's foundation. Isabella, or 'Bell' as she was more familiarly known, became an outstanding student who took a major rôle in College concerts, on one occasion leading a performance of the Beethoven Septet and on another playing his under Holmes's direction. But such inconclusive documentary evidence as survives of her studentship tells us less of her violin playing than of the moral régime thought appropriate for musical education at the Royal College of Music in Victorian days. Holmes had spent considerable periods abroad in more relaxed societies, and his relationship with Isabella was considered too informal. Further, he had, according to Sir George Grove, Director of the College, 'radical unbelieving views'.29 The problem was mentioned in a letter of October 1890, from Grove to his ex-student confidante Edith Oldham. Did I tell you about Holmes and Bell Donkersley? Early in the holidays I got an anon­ ymous letter saying that I ought to notice Holmes's conduct with her; that they usually went across the park together; and hinting though very darkly at improprieties I ought to ask the Police men &c &c. Holmes is very foolish, but wicked or dishonourable I don't think he is. He was in France, and then I sent him the letter begging him to stop at once any open intimacy that could lead to remark &c. I got a note from him very thankful, and promising all that could be desired. Two weeks ago Watson [the Registrar] spoke to me about the intimacy that existed, & that Mrs. Thompson [Lady Superin­ tendent, housekeeper and matron] had been quite frightened on going in to Holmes Room, on several occasions, to find him alone there with B.D. - that he gave her extra lessons, when no one else was present; that she brought up his lunch & did various 22 August Jaeger Portrait o/Nimrod

other personal services to him &c &c. I shd say that Watson knew nothing of the previous letter. On this I wrote another note to him pointing out the inconvenience of such reports, and the danger to B.D. herself of being wounded if such things came to her ears - Then came note No 2 from Holmes; how much he appreciated my good feel­ ings, and everything should cease &c. By Jove! yesterday, I go up between 1 & 2 to consult H. as to having a junior orchestra, and if I don't find him & B.D. alone in the room together! Isn't it foolish & absurd? and also very unfair towards poor D. herself. Holmes has an extravagant opinion of her abilities - I admit she is most praiseworthy and that she plays very well - but she will never be a great player. However she is now studying the Beethoven Concerto, to play it at his Concert later in this term!30 Grovel concern was repeated in a letter of December 1893, three years after Isabella left the College. He had heard that Holmes lectured his girl pupils 'not only on Atheism & Socialism - but on other matters which no man ought to talk to any woman about ...'. A crisis came just a week later, when Holmes was sacked for 'committing the grossest immorality' with several pupils. He went to live permanently in San Fran­ cisco, where he died in 1905; it was said that his memorial at the Royal College of Music was the installation of glass panels in the doors of the teaching rooms.31 Isabella herself seems to have remained in Kensington on leaving the College, adopting a modest performing career, often as a chamber player, presumably together with teaching. Her name appears several times in the pages of the Musical Times during the 1890s and the reviews were consistently good. Her first professional appearance was at Kensington Town Hall, leading a group of ex-College students in chamber works by Brahms, Bruch, Mendeslssohn and Schumann. 'The young lady has a remarkably fine tone and an excellent command of expression', thought the reviewer, and the whole ensemble was thought of sufficient proficiency to play for the Queen on one occasion. There was further praise for later performances, partic­ ularly of trios and quartets by Brahms. At a performance of the Brahms C Minor Quartet, in November 1892, 'Miss Donkersley was once more an excellent leader', according to the reviewer, possibly by this time her admiring suitor, August Jaeger. But naturally enough, perhaps, the warmest review was of a performance given in her native Yorkshire in April 1896:

A high-class Chamber Concert was given on the 15th ult, at the Assembly Rooms, Thirsk, by Miss I.L. Jopling, a talented local pianist and late pupil of the Royal.College of Music. The pièce de résistance of an interesting programme was Mr. Edward German's delightful 'Gipsy Suite' played, in its entirety, by Miss Isabella Donkersley (violin) and the Concert-giver, with great refinement and brilliancy ... The two artists were also heard in an Adagio and Allegro by Corelli, the Andante and Presto from Beethoven's 'Kreutzer' Sonata, and two Hungarian Dances ( Brahms-Joachim), which served admi­ rably to display the fine tone which Miss Donkersley draws from her beautiful Guadagnini. For an encore, the clever violinist delighted the audience by playing the captivating 'Shepherd's Dance' from Mr. German's popular 'Henry VIII' music.32 The Guadanigni violin was another tribute from Yorkshire, for it had been lent to Isabella for life by John Rutson, owner of two estates in the North Riding. A wealthy patron of the arts, a Director of the Royal Academy of Music and a Member of the Council of the Royal College of Music, he was able to acquire many classic violins 1860-95: Dusseldorf to London 23 which he would lend to suitably deserving students to help them start their careers.33 The Guadanigni family made violins for several generations, and the earlier members claimed to be pupils of Stradivarius, on whose instruments they modelled their own. The most noted was Giovanni Battista Guadanigni (c. 1745-90), whose violins were noted for a distinctively highly coloured varnish.34 Whatever his aberrations, Holmes would seem to have been an effective teacher of an instrument with little place in the English tradition; on one occasion Isabella received complimentary mention from Corno di Bassetto himself, George Bernard Shaw.35 Another gifted student composer who caught Jaeger's ear during the 1890s was Henry Walford Davies, bom on the Wales-Shropshire border in 1869. At the age of 13 he gained a choristership at St George's, Windsor under Elvey and then Parratt, becoming assistant to the latter, and Organist of the Chapel Royal, Windsor Park. In 1890, a shy and serious youth, he was awarded a composition scholarship to the Royal College of Music, studying with Parry and Stanford. Despite the disruption of a serious illness and convalescence, he successfully took a Cambridge Bachelor of Music degree two years later. He began to teach counterpoint at the College, while continuing in a succession of posts as organist and choirmaster. Like Coleridge- Taylor, he produced a flow of compositions during the nineties — a symphony, chamber music, church music, a cantata and most notably of all perhaps Prvspice, a setting of Browning for baritone and string quartet. If outwardly Walford Davies might have seemed wedded to the conventional musical paths dictated by the organ- loft, his experience of near-fatal illness drew him creatively to Browning's account of the strong man facing death, and resulted in a powerful and dramatic, if neglected, work. The Musical Times gave a warm welcome to one of Davies's chamber works, in a review which might seem to reflect many of Jaeger's preoccupations: Mr. Charles Jacoby, a former violin pupil of the Royal College of Music, gave two Recitals at the Queen's (Small) Hall, on October 27 and the 5th ult, before large and highly appreciative audiences. His programme ranged from Bach, Beethoven, and Schubert to Wienawski, Sarasate, and Stanford; and both by his selections from these composers and his interpretation of their various works, he proved himself a genuine artist who takes his art very seriously and as an executant of no mean power. He deserves the thanks of music-lovers, and especially of those having the future of English music at heart, for the production of a new Violin and Pianoforte Sonata in D minor by Mr. H. Walford Davies, another erstwhile pupil of the Royal College, and one of the most earnest and talented of our young composers. The new work is not merely the best which Mr. Davies has so far brought to a hearing, but a notable achievement which deserves recognition wherever res severa verum gaudium is still the motto of musicians. There is nobility, pathos, and elevation in the opening Allegro; the grand first subject sweeps along with rare breadth and dignity, and the composer has succeeded in main­ taining almost throughout the whole work the high level thus reached at the very outset. Mr. Davies's workmanship has always been of a high order, and the new Sonata excels in that respect. But what we prize much more is the great advance he has made as a melodist. This, more than anything else, should justify our looking on him as one who will ere long 'arrive' and produce enduring work. At present he is still under the influ­ ence of Brahms, though, in spite of his youth, he has not fallen into the error of emulating that master's over-elaboration and consequent occasional diffuseness as 24 August Jaeger. Portrait ofNimrod

sometimes displayed in his early works. The movements are, in fact, concise and easy to follow, if we except the Andantino, which is so original in design and so sombre, not to say pessimistic in expression, that it is difficult to grasp at a first hearing. In the Alle­ gretto semplice he has dared to be unaffectedly tuneful, and a delightful piece of music is the result The Finale is a vigorous, melodious, and exultant movement, which worthily crowns a work in whch noble endeavour is shown in every bar and the lion's claw' of something very like genius in its finest moments.36 Alongside his cultivation of youthful talent, Jaeger also made contact with more senior members of London's musical world. He dealt with Sir Hubert Parry, whose music Novello's had been publishing since 1880, and who continued to produce a stream of major choral works during the 1890s. A genuine friendship resulted, of much importance to Jaeger in later years. A relationship with another distinguished figure was not without its awkward moments. The ailing George Grove retired from the Royal College during 1895, and went on to devote himself to Beethoven And His Nine Symphonies, published by Novello's early in 1896. A second edition was soon called for and Jaeger's help was sought in various revisions and corrections; the first edition had contained no index and no opus numbers for the symphonies.37 The new edition, however, contained no acknowledgement of services rendered, an omission that Graves considered uncharacteristic, especially as he thought Grove to possess a Cordial admiration' for Jaeger. Perhaps Jaeger attended a meeting of the Musical Association on 12 February 1895, when Grove read an admirable scholarly paper on the alterations made in the score of Beethoven's Ninth since the composer's death. He provided a meticulous listing of various alterations to the score, concluding with a plea for a return to a strict observance of Beethoven's original scores based on an edition 'of these great works as Beethoven left them.' Grove's veneration for the composer as expressed that evening is almost embarrassing to present-day ears. 'Our feeling towards him is one of such utter veneration, such an unqualified desire to do anything he asked — if he could fortunately be here to ask us! — that it is hard to suppose that he could ever have made any request without its being at once obeyed!'.38 But while emphasizing the authority of purely documentary evidence in support of his argument, Grove had introduced his talk with a modest disclaimer: 'My remarks this evening are not to be taken as those of a musician, to which char­ acter I cannot pretend.' It was this elevation of the letter of the law above the spirit which was at the root of the differences that would emerge with Jaeger, who was a musician before everything. References

Index

Ysaye, E. 74, 122